The present invention relates to a computer method and system for tracking product sales, and more particularly to a method and system for tracking sales on the Internet.
The Internet comprises a vast number of computers, network links between the computers, and protocol and other interface standards that provide a communication network for computer representatives to exchange computer data with other computer representatives. The World Wide Web (xe2x80x9cWWWxe2x80x9d) was designed as an easy visual interface for representatives of the Internet. The WWW allows a server computer, called a Web site, to send graphical Web pages of information, called Web pages, to a remote representative""s computer and allows the remote representative""s computer to display the Web pages on a display. These Web pages may contain control regions, such as simulated push buttons, that allow the representative to acquire and display additional, related Web pages of information in a hypertext fashion.
The Internet is based on information exchange from servers to clients. Each client and server has an Internet address called a Uniform resource Locator (xe2x80x9cURLxe2x80x9d). An example of a URL address is xe2x80x9chttp://acme.com/page1.xe2x80x9d The URL has two parts: (1) a scheme and (2) a scheme-specific part. The scheme identifies the high-level protocol through which the information is to be exchanged, and the scheme-specific part contains additional information useful in establishing a connection between a client and a server. The WWW uses the HTTP protocol. The xe2x80x9chttpxe2x80x9d at the beginning of the example URL, above, is the scheme, and indicates that the Internet address specified by the example URL exchanges information using HTTP, and is therefore a WWW site. The remainder of the URL following the colon is the scheme-specific part that, for WWW servers, generally indicates a host HTTP server name and the file system path to a Web page to be transferred. In this example, the host HTTP server is identified by xe2x80x9cacme.comxe2x80x9d and the Web page is identified by xe2x80x9cpage1.xe2x80x9d
Currently, a Web page is defined by a HyperText Markup Language (xe2x80x9cHTMLxe2x80x9d) file. The software on a client that manages the Internet connections and interprets and effects the commands contained in HTML documents is called a browser. When a representative indicates to the browser a desire to view a Web page, the browser initiates a client computer request that the server transfer to the client computer an HTM file that defines the Web page. When the requested HTML file is received by the client computer, the browser uses the HTML file to construct the Web page and display it to the representative on the client computer display. The HTML file contains various commands for displaying text, graphics, controls, background colors for the Web page, and other displayed features. The HTML file may contain URL addresses of other Web pages available on the server, which allow the browser to offer to the representative hypertext-type selection and display of the other Web pages. In addition, the HTML file also may contain URL addresses, called hot links, to other Web pages at other Web sites. Thus, a representative may be able not only to navigate among Web pages available on the server to which he initially connected, but also among Web pages on entirely different servers. Additional types of Web page description facilities, other than HTML, are either currently available or planned for future release.
In general, the Web servers are stateless with respect to client transactions. In other words, at the HTTP protocol level, each transaction (e.g., request for an HTML file) is separate from all others. In other common networking system protocols, a client might initialize a connection to the server, conduct a series of requests from the server and receive information for each request, and then terminate the connection from the server, and the entire exchange, from the initialization to the termination of the connection, would be considered a transaction. In such systems, the client/server connection may be considered to be in one of several different states at any instance, depending on the nature of the requests and responses and their order. Such systems require that state information be saved by the server, and also usually by the client, and require time outs and other connection failure strategies. The stateless nature of the Web simplifies the server and client architectures.
The use and capabilities of the WWW have greatly increased in recent years. It is now a media that supports commerce and holds even greater promise for commerce in the future as a media that can connect buyers with sellers, can take actual orders, and can complete the associated payments.
However, the WWW today has several problems in supporting large scale commerce. One of the key problems is simply putting the buyers and sellers in contact. Because of the vastness of the WWW, even if a person knows what they want, they may not be able to find it. And, even more importantly, the WWW lacks in the ability to create xe2x80x9cimpulsexe2x80x9d type buying in which a customer stumbles upon a product or service that appeals to them at that moment, and then allows them to make an immediate purchase.
For the sake of this discussion, the WWW can be divided into two kinds of Web sites: (1) those that attract Web surfers (i.e., potential customers) by providing rich content of specific interest to the Web surfer, and (2) those that actually are trying to sell a product or service. The content-rich sites vastly outnumber the selling sites. A problem for the selling sites is to get the potential customers who are at the content-rich sites to know that the selling site has a product that is available to be sold on the Web. However, a content-rich site typically needs some incentive (i.e., compensation) to put its Web surfers in contact with the selling sites.
Currently, a content-rich site can be compensated using a couple of different compensation methods. The existing methods, however, have several problems associated with them and ultimately do not provide an adequate incentive.
The first existing method is the WWW""s version of the traditional advertising model. With this method, a seller simply creates a small graphic image, called a banner ad, and has the content-rich site place the ad in a prominent position on a Web page of the content-rich site. The banner ad has a hot link to the selling site. A Web surfer (i.e., potential customer) will notice the ad, then xe2x80x9cclickxe2x80x9d on it and thereby pass through to the selling site, where a purchase may be made. With this method, the content-rich Web site is compensated in the traditional advertising way. Typically, the content-rich site displaying the ad will receive a fixed fee based on the number of times the ad was presented to potential customers.
There are several problems with banner advertising. A first problem is that when the Web surfer clicks on the banner ad, the surfer leaves the content-rich site and goes to the selling site and possibly will not return. This is a strong disincentive for the content-rich site owner because the owner wants the Web surfer to explore and to stay at its site for as long as possible.
A second problem is that, when a purchase is made, the selling site collects and retains information about the Web surfer (e.g., home address and telephone number). The seller can then market to the Web surfer directly. The content-rich site, however, does not take advantage of this information and typically is not compensated if additional purchases are made by the Web surfer.
A third problem is the standard problem of all traditional advertisingxe2x80x94fairness. There is no connection between the compensation and the actual results of the ad. It may be that the selling site ended up making no sales at all to the people that were presented the ad, in which case the selling site paid money for no results. Conversely, perhaps many sales were made, in which case the content-rich site owner received too little compensation.
The second existing method is a commission based compensation model. This method is designed to address the fairness of advertising issue raised above. In this method, the content-rich site still attracts Web surfers and then points them to a selling site, either by using the same kind of banner ad, by using a simple hypertext link, or by using an even more complex xe2x80x9cco-brandedxe2x80x9d Web page that acts as a bridge between the content-rich site and the selling site. In any case, the content-rich site is compensated only when the customer that it delivered to the selling site actually makes a purchase directly after linking from the content-rich site (as opposed to, for example, returning to the selling site a week later to make a purchase, in which case the content-rich site receives no commission).
This commission based method also has several problems. The first two problems are the same problems as with the advertising method: failure of customers to return to the content-rich Web site and lack of access to customer information by the content-rich Web site.
The third problem is again one of fairness. While it would appear that a commission on the sale is fair, a content-rich site owner is only compensated if the purchase is immediate. Once the potential purchaser has left the content-rich site and goes to the selling site, then from that moment on, they know about the selling site and how to get to it. The next time the purchaser wants to visit the selling site to make a purchase, the purchaser will simply go directly to the sellers site and bypass the content-rich site completely. When the Web surfer does this, the content-rich site will receive no commission on the later sales. So, in fact, the content-rich site owner receives a commission for delivering, at most, one sale; that is, the owner only receives a one-time commission if the customer purchases a product when the customer visits the selling site through the content-rich site. The content-rich site may have delivered a customer, potentially a life-long customer, to the selling site, for which the content-rich site owner will receive no ongoing commission.
A need has been recognized, therefore, for a way to track purchases on the Web that avoids the problems associated with the banner advertising method and the commission method. The invention described below addresses this need by providing an efficient, easily maintained, and flexible method for establishing a computer-based relationship between a content-rich site and a selling site.
The present invention is directed to a method for tracking a purchase by a customer of a product supplied by a merchant through what is referred to as a xe2x80x9cvirtual outlet,xe2x80x9d where the merchant, virtual outlet owner, and customer each have a computer connected through a network and where the purchase is conducted as a transaction over the network. To purchase the product, the customer requests a Web page from the virtual outlet computer. The requested Web page typically has a visual indication of the product and a link associated with the product. The link identifies a merchant Web page available from the merchant computer, identifies the virtual outlet, and identifies a return Web page of the virtual outlet. When the customer computer receives the requested Web page from the virtual outlet, it displays the Web page. When the customer selects the product to purchase from the displayed Web page, the customer computer sends to the merchant computer a request for the merchant Web page identified by the link associated with the product. The merchant computer modifies the merchant Web page to contain a return link so that upon completion of the purchase, the customer computer displays the return Web page of the virtual outlet identified by the link and sends to the customer computer the modified merchant Web page. The modified merchant Web page is displayed at the customer computer to allow the customer to purchase the product from the merchant. The merchant computer credits the virtual outlet for the purchase. Upon completion of the purchase, the customer computer displays the return Web page identified by the return link in the modified merchant Web page.